Dear Mom,
Today is your 68th birthday. I’m guessing you’re getting a pretty good look at the happenings from up in heaven, but it’s just not the a same as having you here to share it with us. We miss you, darnit. I want you here so I can give you a silly gift and we can take you to dinner and make you a birthday cake.
It would be so great to have you at work to share in the successes and joy in the company you loved so much and worked so hard with Jim and Grandpa to make into a warm, inviting, ethical, fun culture.
I want you to be able to play with the kids and not just see, but experience what amazing little people they’re becoming. How Ben can read and write so well now and how he picked up rollerblading like it was walking. How Tabby can do complex equations in her head and can bake the most perfect chocolate chip cookies without a lick of help from me or anyone. How they can both doggedly sit at the piano and learn new pieces.
I want to travel with you – to experience places that I know you’d love – France, England, cruising with Mickey. I want to experience entirely new places with you. I’d be fine staying home too. Mostly, I want you here so you can be sharing in all the fun we have. I don’t feel guilty about it. I know you’d want us to keep having fun, but I just want you here to share it with us. Just being with you would be awesome, even if it was at the bottom of the proverbial well.
Selfishly, I want your good advice and your caring words. I want hugs when the world gets just too rough. I want to be able to call you up on the phone for absolutely no reason at all but to say hey. To tell you about the great book I just read and the plans for the weekend and the pretty new sheets I bought just because I know you love that sort of thing.
Obviously I don’t get a choice, because this isn’t the one I’d make.
I think about you often and sometimes I can hear you. I guess either I really listened or you’re still talking (not so hard to believe, given your personality). I’m OK with either.
Keep shining down on us. We’re turning our faces up to you.
Jess